James Lovelock

Begin vorige maand verscheen bij de Britse uitgeverij uitgeverij Penguin 'The Revenge of Gaia,' van professor James Gaia die wereldnaam verwierf met zijn these dat de aarde een levend zichzelf regulerend systeem is. In een artikel in de Independent vatte Lovelock de inhoud van zijn nieuwe boek als volgt samen: 'Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable…Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth…We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.' Lees verder: http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece Zie ook: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2006/01/klimaatverandering-11.html Gisteren interviewde ik James Lovelock over zijn sombere toekomstvisie. Dat gesprek kunt u hier beluisteren: http://webdisk.planet.nl/houck006/default.aspx onder interviews.